Adversaries

Alan Simpson (left), a former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, who served as chief of staff in the Clinton White House, co-chaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

For the past generation or two, Washington has been the not so hallowed ground for a political war. This conflict resembles trench warfare, with fixed positions, hourly exchanges of fire, heavy casualties on both sides, and little territory gained or lost. The combatants wear red or blue, and their struggle is intensely ideological.

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in official Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The “D.” or “R.” after a politician’s name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

To Phyllis Schlafly and the New Right, this consensus amounted to liberalism, and in the nineteen-seventies they began to use guerrilla tactics—direct mail, single-issue pressure groups, right-wing think tanks, insurgent campaigns. By the nineties, conservatives had begun to take over the institutions of government. Liberals copied their success: the Heritage Foundation led to the Center for American Progress, the Moral Majority to People for the American Way, Bill O’Reilly to Keith Olbermann. The people Washington attracts now tend to be committed activists, who think of themselves as locked in an existential struggle over the fate of the country, and are unwilling to yield an inch of ground.

Meanwhile, another army has invaded Washington: high-priced influence peddlers working on behalf of corporations and the wealthy, seducing officials of both parties and daily routing the public interest. The War of Organized Money goes on almost unnoticed outside the capital, but the War Between the Colors reflects a real divide in the country, the sorting of Americans into ideologically separate districts and lives. From time to time, a looming disaster—such as the upcoming budget crisis—leads to negotiations and a brief truce. But the fighting never really stops.

—George Packer

Clockwise from top left: James and Sarah Brady, who have lobbied for gun control ever since Brady was paralyzed, during an attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life, in 1981; Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats and former Speaker of the House; John Podesta, founder of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress; William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard.

Clockwise from top left: Robert M. Duncan, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who now heads a group that promotes coal-generated electricity; Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace in the United States; Phyllis Schlafly, a leading conservative voice since the nineteen-sixties; Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.